Letter to my Childhood Friend

Dear Grandfather,

It has been twelve days since you left us and although I miss you dearly, I know in my heart that you have been released into an eternal happiness. As you are once again with Grandma, your everlasting love.

Growing up, I've lost so many dear to me that sometimes when I am all alone, it is hard to ignore the looming shadows in my heart.

You and Grandma were all I had as a child. Sure, I had parents, uncles and an aunt. Later, my uncles and aunt would go their own ways and marry. Soon my cousins would come and the family would grow. But everyone else still fades into the background when I think of the both of you and remember my earliest years.

I would spend my days with you and Grandma in your shophouse in Chinatown. Where the common staircase always reeked of urine and cats. The house is imprinted in my mind and sometimes in my waking dreams, I find myself wandering the still, silent rooms, retracing the childhood world I used to know.

I still remember everything about the house. The funky, used-plastic scent that would come off the cheap, linoleum floors, and even how they would smell exactly the same, after Grandma had thoroughly mopped them, and they were dutifully dusted and mopped every morning. Perhaps I should not use the word mop, for Grandma's belief was that floors had to be manually wiped and scrubbed where necessary, and she would do this on her own, down on all fours. We had mops but she would not use them because she felt they did not clean effectively enough.

I remember the wooden windows that we would rush to shut when the rains came. The smell of rain would permeate every part of the old, wooden structure and to me, the thunder always sounded louder here than anywhere else. I remember the stairs to the attic where you and Grandma slept, dark and mysterious, even in the day. I remember the storage spaces cleverly tucked to the side of the attic stairs. I remember Grandma's clothing cabinet, ingeniously constructed under the lowest beams of the sloping roof, where Grandma would keep her more special clothes.  I remember the kitchen, the rough cement floors and the kitchen god's altar. I remember my futile, four year old attempts to tell you and Grandma about God over a breakfast of soft-boiled eggs and fresh bread on a Monday morning. I even remember that the verse I quoted to you was John 3:16.

I remember you would take me to the dirty, waterlogged drains around Chinatown, where the water was so dirty it was always a dark putrid, black. By a busy intersection, you would roll up your pants, take off your slippers, step into a drain and scoop up the tiny fish living in the "long kau" for me. I could have easily fallen in and drowned but I had no understanding of fear for you were there beside me. These fish we would transfer into a plastic tank with tap water, where they would die in hours, having been born and raised in water so rancid it was not possible to replicate even if we tried.  

Above all, I remember being so attached to you and Grandma and the old shophouse, that for ages, my parents' apartment never felt like a true home to me.

When the time came for us to part with the old shophouse, the family was understandably very upset. But we had no choice, the government had taken back the lease and given us the notice to vacate. After you and Grandma moved in with my fourth uncle's family, I remember asking Grandma, ever the practical soul, if she missed the place. She would say, she missed the place but that it was a pain to keep clean. And that somehow, the new place, although bigger and more spacious, could not store as much as the old place could. That would be the most I could get out of her, before she went off to work on yet another household chore and tell me to leave the kitchen.

Grandma served our family daily from pre-dawn til late at night. Never complaining, never letting up. I loved her so much, and I wanted to tail her everywhere. But you were different. From the beginning of my memory, you always had a distinct place in my heart, next to Grandma's. Together, you and grandma showed me what marriage and life-long commitment meant. You showed me what hard work, parenthood and love meant.

I remember always feeling very lost in a world of bustling adults. To a lonely, little girl, you were her stability, her fortress, her understanding and most of all, her playmate. Grandma, though affectionate, would be very busy in the kitchen most of the time.

Unlike my parents, however well-intended, you never pushed me to be independent. You understood that a child needed to be allowed to be a child. You never had exceedingly high expectations of me and you never blamed me for anything that went wrong.

Between you and Grandma, she was the warrior, attacking the chores meticulously and waking at dawn each day to serve her beloved family, whilst you were the dreamer and the handyman.

As a child, I was effortlessly fluent in Hokkien and was always conversing freely with the adults in the family. It probably took a lot of effort for the other adults to get me to shut up. But not you. However as time went by I attended school and my cousins came along. The family then began speaking in English. Slowly and sadly, I lost my fluency in the dialect and would revert to broken Hokkien and faltering Mandarin when communicating with you and Grandma. Still you both could understand me somehow, without trying.

You always had a glint in your eye when I mentioned the old shophouse. I was sure, and remain sure to this day, that you have your own special memories of the place. Memories that outnumber mine and would easily outdo mine in terms of exulting the finer details, but yet you simply wanted to hear what your grand-daughter could remember. You were always too happy to listen to me and it brought you great amusement. Your bright, sparkling eyes always encouraged me to continue accounting my stories. As a result, I was always too engrossed in the story telling to realise that I never got to picture what you remembered of the old shophouse. It was not until I was much older that I became the listener instead, and you allowed me into your realm of memories.

There was nothing you couldn't fix. You would buy broken cameras, broken clocks and bric-brac that people wanted to get rid of and bring them home to your attic work table and fix them. You would touch and examine each contraption, learning from your mental picture of how each component was supposed to function and looked for spare parts to replace defective or broken ones. In particular, I remember the countless film cameras you gave me as a child. My parents would complain that I was wasting film, which was considered excessively expensive for a child to play with, in those days.

It is, therefore, only to you, that I owe my life-long interest in photography.

I am so like you, that I never cared for user manuals or training workshops, for you were completely self-taught and learnt at your own pace, when fancy (or should I say 'necessity') struck.

When we found out that Grandma was ill with advanced bone cancer, you were livid. You kept saying that it should have been you instead. You spent countless days sitting at Grandma's hospital bedside. Whenever I visited her, you would be there too. Perhaps you were lost at home, without Grandma's presence in the kitchen. I understood you but I was shell shocked and had no words to give you then, whether in broken Hokkien or failing Mandarin. I was sixteen and terrified. Mummy had already been stricken with cancer since 1995 and when the news came about Grandma, I was not sure what to think. The adults suddenly stopped talking about the state of things and the other children were too young to understand. It was a very awkward time for me, and I would often look back later and call it a dark year.

After Grandma passed away in December 1998 and my mother about six weeks after her, in February 1999, our family was changed forever.

All our hearts broke for you when you suddenly called for a family meeting and started to give out Grandma's jewels and your remaining assets. Dad and I were particularly broken. We were crying openly and so were you. To me, it seemed like you were announcing your death to us because you had lost your reason to live. I was truly scared and did not know what to make of everything. It was too much for me to deal with and I tried to minimise my interactions with the family to try and wipe out my despair. It was easy enough to do as Dad was always away (perhaps for the same reason?) and we did not live close to any of the rest of the family.

Sometime after you moved to live with Fifth uncle, I completed my diploma. I had a few months of temporary work at a law firm before I decided to go overseas to do a degree. Dad was very unhappy about the whole thing and wanted me to reconsider. He suggested that I take a certificate course in beauty therapy and when I rejected that flatly, he wanted me to sign on with the Singapore Armed Forces. It was really quite ridiculous because I was never someone who liked strenuous physical activity but Dad was convinced. When you found out, you were so angered by Dad's suggestion that you told him plainly that you already had, not just five sons who already completed their army stints, but also eight grandsons who would, in time, grow up and perform their compulsory duty to the nation. You made it known that he was not to make a soldier out of your eldest grand-daughter.

Dad complied and I happily went on to do my degree in Australia. Whilst I was there, your health started to deteriorate and there were a few times when the family was told to gather at your bedside. It tore at my heart for me to not be physically present. After three semesters, it seemed that you were not recovering. I made a decision to move back home and complete the remainder of my degree externally.

That year, I insisted on preparing a traditional Chinese New Year reunion dinner at our place. I wanted more than anything for the whole family to have a home-cooked meal once again. After Grandma passed on, there was no matriarch, my aunts tried to host the reunion dinners initially but did not have the stamina to keep it up. As we then numbered at least 25 strong, it was far too much work to prepare the food and organise everybody. Thus we had started going out for the reunion dinner for a number of years. It was always insanely overpriced and no one really enjoyed it, and we were always chased off by harried servers and restaurant owners. So in 2006 I insisted on organizing because my university term had not begun and I had loads of time on my hands.

I remember how happy you were at the dinner. You had no complains and ate everything with a healthy gusto. All the inconveniences and troubles I had to go through in putting it together simply melted away. I was so happy to see you enjoy yourself, it was all that was important to me. I still think of it as one of my greatest achievements and this memory positively shines on in my mind whenever I look back.

When Rz and I got engaged in 2007, I requested to have the wedding early so that you could be there and revel in it to the fullest. You were becoming very frail already and whilst still very lucid at the time, I was simply not taking chances. I told Rz that if possible, I'd love for you to see our children. I wanted very much for you to see them and know them, and to me, after having lost Grandma and Mummy, time was always in short supply. I was simply in a hurry, and Dad, as usual, could not understand it (he called it "rash behaviour".. and I actually deserve to rant about this because my dad later re-married after a very short period of dating whereas Rz and I were together for four years before we got engaged.) but thankfully, Rz understood and agreed so we went ahead. Dad being dad, did not agree, thus he did not finance us. But I persisted and went ahead, in my usual style.

One day in 2008, whilst we were chatting away, you told me that upon arriving in Singapore for the very first time, many, many years ago, you had picked out 1923 as your year of birth for registration purposes in Singapore. You had come over with your family from China and had no official papers and you didn't even know your date of birth. You told me that the year 1923 was either selected by yourself or your own father (who also did not know the actual date of your birth) and it was memorable to one or both of you, but by the time you were relaying the account to me, you could no longer remember why 1923 was special. You had taken out your identity card and was showing it to me for the first time. The date reads 00-00-1923. We mulled about it together and the topic moved on to other random things. Later I was told by my uncles that you had never mentioned this to them and they had no inkling whether or not it was true. As for me, there was no question, since it came directly from you.

You poured out memory after memory to me, every day after your stay. I was very grateful for those conversations, for shortly after that, you lost your memory and began to descend into a blissful twilight. Towards the end, you even forgot all our names. It was very sad for us to watch. I was aggrieved because you had no more recollection, but I knew it would be less stressful for you, carrying the burden of your memories and grief with you.

Now that I am thirty and standing on the edge of a new chapter in life, I find that I have lost so much in life that I value. You are amongst these and I know that eventually I will be able to stand up and move on, but right now all I can think of is you, Grandma and Mummy. I know you would want me to be the best I can be and not look back with sadness nor a heavy heart. I cannot add the loss of you to the equation without feeling completely bereft, but I cannot disrespect your memory by with-holding my goodbye.

Thank you for being my grandfather and my first, childhood friend. Thank you for teaching me so much. For loving me so much. Thank you for showing me the value of family versus fortune. May you and Grandma rest in blissful peace, knowing that your family will never forget you and everything that you stood for.

Love for always.

Your grand-daughter.

- 28 September 2012 9:40am -